Under-rated Mackenzie helped shape the country

Jan. 22 marks the 140th anniversary of the first Liberal party electoral victory in Canada. Alexander Mackenzie had been prime minister since the previous November after John A. Macdonald’s Conservative-Liberal government fell following the Pacific Railway scandal and Lord Dufferin, the Governor General, asked him to form a government. But he didn’t face voters for nearly two months and, when he did, Mackenzie’s Liberals won 129 seats while the Tories won 65. While historians generally rate Mackenzie poorly — J.L. Granatstein and Norman Hiller ranked Mackenzie 11th out of the first 20 prime ministers in their 1999 poll of historians — he was still nonetheless an important and influential leader. Dale C. Thomson says in his 1960 political biography of Mackenzie that he was “one of the least known, and certainly the most under-rated, of Canada’s prime ministers.”

Jan. 22 marks the 140th anniversary of the first Liberal party electoral victory in Canada. Alexander Mackenzie had been prime minister since the previous November after John A. Macdonald’s Conservative-Liberal government fell following the Pacific Railway scandal and Lord Dufferin, the Governor General, asked him to form a government. But he didn’t face voters for nearly two months and, when he did, Mackenzie’s Liberals won 129 seats while the Tories won 65.

While historians generally rate Mackenzie poorly — J.L. Granatstein and Norman Hiller ranked Mackenzie 11th out of the first 20 prime ministers in their 1999 poll of historians — he was still nonetheless an important and influential leader. Dale C. Thomson says in his 1960 political biography of Mackenzie that he was “one of the least known, and certainly the most under-rated, of Canada’s prime ministers.”

Alexander Mackenzie was born in Scotland, the son of an itinerant carpenter, and moved to Canada in 1842 to become a stonemason, and later a general builder and contractor. He was drawn to the reformist Clear Grits and became a friend and supporter of George Brown, the publisher of The Globe and an influential leader within the party.

He was first elected to the pre-Confederation Legislative Assembly in 1861. Known for his oratory, when Brown left the Liberal Party’s leadership in 1867, Mackenzie became part of his faction’s leadership-by-committee that included Edward Blake, Luther Hamilton Holton, and Antoine-Aimé Dorion. Mackenzie tried to get Blake to agree to become the leader, but the Ontario premier (politicians could simultaneously hold seats provincially and federally) demurred due to either poor health or, considering Macdonald’s popularity, poor electoral prospects.

Macdonald’s government fell because of the Pacific Railway scandal and Mackenzie’s Liberals held onto power tenuously between his being appointed prime minister on Nov. 7, 1873 and the election two months later. Mackenzie manipulated Parliament to prevent the crafty Macdonald from regaining power but he also brought political reform to clean up elections.

True to his Clear Grit roots, the new government passed the Dominion Elections Act, which immediately eliminated the requirement that candidates for Parliament had to own property, introduced the secret ballot for elections and required that all ridings hold their elections on the same day. Later, the government moved legal oversight of campaign malfeasance from a parliamentary committee to the courts to ensure some modicum of impartiality.

Mackenzie detested patronage and political favouritism and he gave himself the Minister of Public Works portfolio so he could minimize the awarding of federal contracts and appointments to Liberals that came looking for favours. That, at least, was his goal, but in practice he awarded party supporters government contracts and appointed party loyalists to various sinecures, even as he complained to colleagues and family that requests for positions and contracts were a “torment” to him.

Mackenzie’s time in office coincided with a global recession that prevented the government from financing the railway to British Columbia. The rail link was a provision in the agreement for the province to join Confederation, and the government in Victoria threatened to leave Canada, providing Canada its first major crisis.

Lord Dufferin, the politically active Governor General and ally of Macdonald whom Mackenzie distrusted, went to B.C. to convince the province to not leave Confederation. This chafed the prime minister, who successfully petitioned the British to limit the powers of the Governor General, thereby moving the head of state’s role away from governing.

Mackenzie’s government was hobbled by the fact that neither of his first two choices for finance minister (Blake and Holton) agreed to take the job and, save Blake for a few months, any job in cabinet.

Busy with the offices of prime minister and minister of public works, and focused on making government work while revenues were down and his most able colleagues were absent from cabinet, Mackenzie neglected his role as party leader. The Liberals were losing byelections, donors and public support. This led Brown, then a senator, to petition a bank for funds, which resulted in a series of minor scandals for the government that contributed to its defeat in 1878.

Although he only served one term, Mackenzie created a number of lasting central institutions, including the North West Mounted Police (1873) which became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Supreme Court of Canada (1875), and Royal Military College (1876). He enacted laws to help govern and settle the northwest, the territory between Manitoba and B.C.

Johnson says in his biography, Alexander Mackenzie: Clear Grit, “many of his accomplishments marked the path to Canadian nationhood.” Mackenzie was a political failure and many of his policies failed to address the dismal Canadian economy but, in his one term in office, the first Liberal prime minister left an indelible mark on the country Canada would become.

Paul Tuns, a political commentator, is author of Jean Chrétien: A Legacy of Scandal.

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